On the night of May fourth, 2013, it rained, first falling soft as a hush then gradually working itself up into a tantrum that would have rivaled Sherlock Holmes on one of his bored days. It was going to be an important night to remember, anniversaries were dangerous if forgotten you know, but that was knowledge that the universe had decided to keep a secret.
On this night of unexpected importance, Mycroft Holmes was facing the unpleasant prospect that an already difficult day was about to cascade into an equally difficult evening. When one holds a seat of ambiguous (high) power in the British government most days are difficult but May fourth, 2013 had been particularly… Cumbersome. No, Mycroft thought, cumbersome wasn't quite the word. Terrible was less eloquent but it served its purpose more effectively, nothing about the day had been elegant.
Sometime last night a political prisoner had managed to commit suicide in an entirely empty cell. Ching Shih, a formidable Chinese hit-woman captured last month had seized the opportunity to hang herself by her prison-issue shoelaces and the guards discovered her body in the morning on the way to interrogate her. Mycroft was sure that it was the morning she would finally reveal the name of her employer but, well, these things happen.
While he had been attending to that manner a second political prisoner offed himself in a room with no rope, knives, or pills. Vsevolod Avilov, a Russian hit man brought in only weeks ago had bashed his head continuously against the wall of his cell until he lost consciousness. He died later in an ambulance loaded with armed guards, blood sloshing around inside of his skull. Mycroft had always considered Avilov to be a touch out of his mind and his violent suicide proved it. The hit man's insanity had been working in the governments favor in the weeks he had been available to them, the assassin's mouth spewed secret knowledge like a broken fountain. Of course, the actual name of his employer had never come up, only detailed accounts of his living quarters and arguments with his boyfriend, which was almost a dead giveaway anyway. The men upstairs had given Mycroft hell for allowing such precious secrets to slip down the drain and the older Holmes brother did not have the guts to explain that it really wasn't his fault. These things happen.
If the double suicide hadn't been enough, hours later a delicate sting operation in Gaza had blown up in Britain's face. Four spies, all close friends of Mycroft had their cover blown in enemy territory. One had died and two were captured, leaving the last injured and on the lam. The whole thing had led to more hell from upstairs.
Mycroft Holmes, however, was still clinging onto a desperate man's hope.
There was an assassination, only days old, nameless (it had been kept under wraps the size of a circus tent), and currently sitting unsolved, waiting for some brave, clever man to crack. If the assassin was caught, Mycroft supposed, all the paperwork concerning this nightmarish day would be shoveled onto some unsuspecting intern, and the older Holmes brother could cash in a few of his vacation days.
There was one hole in Mycroft's grand design, and it glared at him like the eye of a whirlpool. He was clever certainly, but far from brave, and this case would require legwork. He was no detective. It was, though he hated to admit it, a job for a different Holmes, a younger Holmes, though he refused to even think that.
A quick search through the security cameras he controlled revealed that his brother was currently showing off at a crime scene near One Great George Street. Mycroft packed an umbrella. He did not need a wet suit to add to his misery.
But the universe, with all of its secrets, had something planned, and misery wasn't going to be a problem for very long.